This invention relates to a file management method for executing file management of file versions, etc., and a file management system to which the method is applied.
On a network, each server manages files existing at positions that can be managed by the server itself with file identifiers. The files under the management of the server are shared by a plurality of clients. Therefore, a plurality of files different in contents may be created from one file, in which case parentage among the files, namely, version relationship is produced and the files having some bearing on each other make up a version group.
FIG. 24 is a schematic block diagram of a client-server system.
According to the system block diagram, the client-server system comprises clients 1, 2, and 3 and servers 4 and 5 which can be workstations or personal computers; they have each a communication function and are connected to each other by a local area network 6. Further, another network system 7, a mainframe computer 8, etc., may be connected to the local area network 6 via a communication link.
Such a system containing a plurality of client machines and a plurality of server machines can provide a distributed filing system or a distributed data processing system, and the servers 4 and 5 can distribute and save documents or data created by the clients 1, 2, and 3 to and in a plurality of servers. Further, the clients 1, 2, and 3 can fetch the saved documents or data, edit/update the documents or data, and register/save the resultant documents or data as different documents or data.
FIG. 25 is a block diagram to show a configuration example of a server.
A server 9 shown in the figure has a communication section 9a connected to the local area network 6, a file storage section 9b for storing document files or data files, and a file processing section 9c for performing input/output management of document files or data files, and provides a file server to enable one client in the client-server system to access and use document files, etc., created by another client.
When receiving a request for registering or editing a document file from a client through the communication section 9a, the file processing section 9c registers or fetches the document file in or from the file storage section 9b.
When the contents of a document file are updated, a new updated document file is created from the original document file existing before the update. In such file update, there is only one earlier version (before update) file of one updated document file; in the version management method, the version relationship between the document files before and after update are constructed like a linear or tree structure and version management is easy.
When the contents of a document file are updated, the relationship between the document files, namely, version information may be recorded so that the document file based on which the document file contents are updated can be seen. For example, a system described in Japanese Patent Publication No. Hei 6-103484 is available as a system for recording the version information for managing a number of document files. According to Japanese Patent Publication No. Hei 6-103484, a version relationship holding system is described wherein a version root identifier is assigned to an original file and can be used to hold a plurality of the earlier version documents. That is, the system has version management means having a plurality of earlier version files, assigns a version root identifier to the original file from which the later version files are derived, and uses the identifier to relate the later version files derived to each other, thereby managing the files derived from the same original file as a single group.
However, in the version management method having only one earlier version file, when a version management method having a plurality of earlier version (before update) files, for example, resulting from combining two files to create a new file is considered, the version relationship does not become a simple linear or tree structure; if a file is deleted, relationship management of version relationship update, etc., becomes complicated.
On the other hand, in the system described in Japanese Patent Publication No. Hei 6-103484, when a new file is registered in a version information file, a plurality of files in the same version group can be set as earlier versions, but a plurality of files in different version groups cannot be set as earlier versions, namely, a plurality of files cannot be combined to create an update file. Further, the system can hold complicated version relationship, but enables only getting earlier and later version files and getting files using version root identifiers; file handling based on the version relationship, for example, such file handling of tracing the version relationship and getting only necessary files is difficult to perform.